Last December or so....GreyScale Gorilla announced that customers of theirs who had previously purchased perpetual-license software plugins....were going to see their investments abruptly truncated into annual licenses....

I won't rehash my views on the ethics of that announcement/decision but I do seem to recall that GSG promised they weren't merely going to milk old tools for more money, but that they were going to be enhancing these tools...that customers should expect new features in return for ongoing investment.

Then at NAB in April Chris Schmidt gave a tease of new some enhancements to Topcoat that looked pretty good, so I thought...OK...well good for them...at least they are living up to that promise.

And I do anticipate that they will will get around to that. They seemingly have strived to serve the c4d community...and have obviously been very generous with their training resources.

The only thing that has me scratching my head is that it's now coming up on half a year after their announcement and they've been collecting a lot of extra funds for "renewals". But I still haven't seen TopCoat 1.1 or Signal 1.x or even any announcements.

Anyone with a scoop on what to expect in more concrete and immediate terms? Maybe something at SIGGRAPH?

Hi Nick,
Very excited about the updated HDRI collection but I couldn't find the free download link. Does it work for customers who bought your products before the current annual licence scheme? Myself and the company I work for (50+ C4D seats) are part of that group. Thanks!

Biggest new feature appears to be a new Modifiers tab, though not shown in screenshots on the web page.

The full list

Quote:
New Modifiers Tab give you Accurate Feedback.
New Blurs section adds realistic blur effects to your textures.
New Anisotropy effects give you that brushed metal look in seconds.
New Vertical Layout option. Perfect for docking the interface in your Cinema 4D Layout.
Texture Colors Can now be picked in the main interface.
Instantly rename your layers by double clicking.
Layers can be easily dragged to rearrange.
Easily Solo Layers.
Bump, blur, and mask presets can be right-clicked to add to other channels.
Transparency Reflectance Channel can now be accessed and modified in Topcoat
New "Invert Bump" button in Modifiers.
New "Color to Bump" button in Modifiers.

I thought the upgrade looked pretty good. I look forward to trying it out. Unfortunately I won't have much time for 3d in the next week or two. Database dev deadlines loom and a tradeshow in Vegas next week.

One thing I notice about GSG products; sometimes it can be difficult to find detailed, impartial reviews on them. I don't know if that's because the people who do reviews don't normally buy GSG stuff or... I dunno. Some other reason. I think in general it's hard to find good plugin reviews for C4D stuff, now that I think about it.

Originally Posted by Blinny: I think in general it's hard to find good plugin reviews for C4D stuff, now that I think about it.

Indeed, there's a real lack of a definitive impartial review/roundup site for 3D and graphics software in general. I'd love to read a well written, authoritative site which thoroughly and exhaustively tests software and applications. Sites like Lester Banks and CG Terminal are great for news, but I've yet to see anywhere extensively road test the software.

I think the lack of response on here about the GSG stuff is that their plugins are aimed at beginners and hobbyists, and a lot of us are using third party render engines which means using C4Ds native textures and lighting is not possible.

Originally Posted by vel0city:Indeed, there's a real lack of a definitive impartial review/roundup site for 3D and graphics software in general. I'd love to read a well written, authoritative site which thoroughly and exhaustively tests software and applications. Sites like Lester Banks and CG Terminal are great for news, but I've yet to see anywhere extensively road test the software.

I think the lack of response on here about the GSG stuff is that their plugins are aimed at beginners and hobbyists, and a lot of us are using third party render engines which means using C4Ds native textures and lighting is not possible.

there are some who do look down on C4D users who use GSG plug-ins, "you could do what that plug-in does easily if you just tried".

I think that a lot of the GSG customers are pros, but ones who are experienced in 2D and 2.5D motion graphics and are just getting their feet wet in 3D. And I'm sure there are also customers who are broadcast 3D pros who just face tight deadlines on a daily basis.

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